Anne Saab, Assistant Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute since September 2015, has recently published “Climate-Ready Seeds and Patent Rights: A Question of Climate (in) Justice?”, an article in which she argues that the invocation of “rights” in discourse about climate justice contributes to obscuring the meaning of the concept of “climate justice”. Today, indeed, “different actors invoke different rights to promote their version of climate justice” adds Anne Saab, who gives further details of her research.

Why did you write this paper?

I wrote this piece for a panel discussion at the 2014 Law and Boundaries/Droit et Limites conference at Sciences Po Law School. The panel was titled “Social Justice and Property”. The conference and the panel in specific appealed to me because of the research I was doing on seeds genetically engineered to be resistant to drought and other climatic conditions (so-called “climate-ready seeds”). I did not explore the concept of climate justice in my doctoral research, and I saw this panel as a great opportunity to think about aspects of my research in terms of broader debates about climate justice and its relation to intellectual property rights over climate-ready seeds.

What exactly is this concept of climate justice?

That is a good question and a very difficult question. The concept of climate justice – as with the concepts of “justice” and “social justice” – can mean different things to different people. Some key and common aspects of climate justice centre on the realisation that the responsibility for contributing to anthropogenic climate change is unequal, with developed countries having contributed by far the most to greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the adverse impacts of climate change are also vastly unequal, with poor and vulnerable populations in the developing world suffering the most. Climate justice is about recognising and addressing these inequalities and urging in particular rich countries to take responsibility for their historical contributions.

In the paper, I identify two forms of climate justice in relation to food. One is a productivist understanding, which holds that food production must increase to address the injustices caused by climate change; the other is a distributive approach, which holds primarily that the distribution of available food must improve to address climate injustice.

You conclude that "reliance on rights in all accounts of climate justice in discourses about climate-ready seeds plays a hand in obscuring the distinct aims and ends contained in the idea of climate justice". What do you mean by that?

I can perhaps best explain what I mean by drawing on the example of climate-ready seeds that forms the case study of this research. In discussions about climate-ready seeds, critical NGOs and civil society organisations contend that the seed corporations developing these seeds obstruct access to them by increasingly applying for exclusive patent rights. While seed corporations present climate-ready seeds as a means to increase crop yields in the face of climate change and contribute to achieving climate justice, critics perceive this as a form of climate injustice. In rejecting patented climate-ready seeds, other forms of proprietary rights are put forth, notably farmers’ rights, sovereign rights over natural resources, and the right to food. The result is that the discussions focus very much on who should have proprietary rights over seeds in the quest for climate justice. There is an implicit assumption that (intellectual) property rights are needed to achieve climate justice, in whichever way that concept is understood. I would argue that there needs to be more attention for what climate justice entails and whether property rights are – or should be – a central part of that. This includes more discussion and recognition of different understandings of climate justice, such as the productivist and distributive approaches.

Are your conclusions related, directly or indirectly, with those of the COP21 in Paris?

My conclusions are not directly related to the COP21 as I wrote this piece a couple of years before the conference. Indirectly, I do believe that there is relevance in thinking about the concept of climate justice and how to utilise this concept in an effective and practical way in climate change negotiations. This is pertinent to devising adaptation strategies (which is what my research has focused on), but also to developing mitigation strategies (which remains the central focus of international climate change negotiations).

Is climate justice your main research interest?

Actually climate justice is not my main research interest. This was really a bit of a side project that definitely is related to my main research, which focuses on how international law contributes to shaping our understanding of the problems of climate change and food insecurity. I look at international legal documents – including on climate change adaptation law, intellectual property law on seeds and plants, and the human right to food. I also look at how legal discourse is employed by different actors in discussions about climate change and food insecurity. 

I carry out this research in three main projects. The first is a monograph based on my PhD research, in which my main argument is that international law – in how it is framed and invoked – reinforces certain fundamental and contested assumptions about climate change and food insecurity. I present this as a pyramid of assumptions. The second project relates to the theory underlying intellectual property rights on plants, in the context of contemporary debates about biopiracy. I explore how John Locke’s labour theory of property was used by the English to justify colonial appropriation of land in the Americas. I then compare this to how patent rights on (genetically engineered) plant genetic resources are justified today. My third project relates to the politics of fear and climate change. I intend to examine the influence of a politics of fear around climate change on human rights discourse, and vice versa. I am in the very early stages of research on this last project, so I will have to wait and see where it takes me!

Full citation: Saab, Anne. “Climate-Ready Seeds and Patent Rights: A Question of Climate (in) Justice?” Global Jurist, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 219–235.